


Moving On

by allfireburns



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Community: tw100, Drabble Sequence, Gen, Grief, Minor Character Death, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-22
Updated: 2009-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:10:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allfireburns/pseuds/allfireburns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there's anything Torchwood teaches you, it's how to move on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving On

The whole place smells of blood and bleach. Jack thinks both have soaked into his skin by now, wonders how long until it fades away. With all the bodies of Alex's team placed with no ceremony in drawers in the morgue, the blood mopped up, everyone's flats cleared out... Jack's at a loss about where to go from here.

The Time Agency taught him that you don't clean up the messes, you don't deal with the fallout. You pick up your things, and you move on as fast as possible. He never learned what to do when that's not an option.

* * *

Tosh always knew, intellectually, that Torchwood life expectancy was... lower than average. Three years, five, eight or ten if you were extremely lucky... Knowing is one thing. Standing by the drawer where Jack's keeping Suzie... That's something else.

Her chest aches and her eyes sting, but she's not crying. She cried last night. Now she just feels hollowed out, hopeless. She thinks she should say something, but it doesn't matter; Suzie won't hear. She doesn't know how long she stands there silently, but finally she turns, walks away, and goes back to work. It's just another day at Torchwood, isn't it?

* * *

For a while, they all think he might come back. Nobody says anything, but you can tell, that silence in the Hub, like everyone's holding their breath, that reluctance to act without him

You can tell, too, when they give up waiting. They talk too much, filling the silence where Jack should be. Gwen moves into Jack's office, and no one argues. Ianto stops waiting up in the tourist centre, stops expecting Jack to waltz through that door any minute.

Historically, Torchwood has always managed to move on, and change, and survive. They'll find a way to survive now, without Jack Harkness.

* * *

The stages of grief are all shit. Owen's always thought so, but he's even more certain of it now. Then, they were always meant for the dying, not the already dead, and maybe that's his problem. Maybe his problem is that he's stuck on anger, and how do you get past that, with no one to bargain with?

Except sometimes, every now and then, he thinks he may have slipped sideways into a sort of acceptance. Dancing with Tosh after Gwen's wedding, for a moment, but for the fact that he can't feel her hand in his, everything feels right.

* * *

The Hub's too quiet without them. Jack and Ianto don't cry, all accustomed to loss, and Gwen follows their lead, but her chest and throat keep aching like she's about to. She glances across the Hub, and for a second is startled when there's only Jack in his office, and Ianto tucked into his corner on the opposite end of the too-large room. Her stomach drops. Her eyes burn.

It's almost worse, she thinks, when she stops looking for them, when she gets used to their absence, when the only thing left of them is a picture by her computer.

* * *

If there's anything Torchwood teaches you, it's how to move on. Gwen thinks that must be how Jack survived all this time, just like this. Days pass in a whirlwind of funerals, moving house and calling in favours, so there's no time to think about what she's leaving behind. She does what she has to, puts the world back in order. Days turn into months, until one day she looks up and finds there's almost nothing left of the way things were.

Aliens and technology aside, that's the real lesson: the only way to keep sane is to keep moving.


End file.
